This old blog is left up for reference and posterity. Most of the views expressed here are outdated, immature and no longer what I think.

I refuse to delete this blog, because it's a vital part of my history and I'm not going to hide from it. So read all of this stuff with a grain of salt.

I hope that you'll head over to My new blog and read what I'm up to now. Thank you.

12.06.2011

A Sneak Peek At The New Book Cover Art By Casey Edwards

So, the new book is only a week and some days away from existence (have you preordered a copy yet? There's still a few hardcovers left, due to a few reserves not being able to come up with the cash in time -- so hop to it!!!)

I could tell you that I was feeling nice and wanted to satisfy your curiosity about the art from the cover, but the truth is, I can't wait. It's just too awesome. Casey Edwards has outdone himself. So it's not me doing you a favor, it's me being twelve years old and wanting to show off :)

So, here are stages from the pending cover -- not all of them, mind you. I'll show you guys the final art once the book is ready. But for now, I thought it'd be fun to show the process we went through getting to the final art.

First was the pencil rough -- the second Casey showed me this, I cackled and immediately knew it was going to be awesome.

Now, the color roughs and flats. This is getting the basics down, and roughing out what I'm going to look like.

Combining the sketches with the colors.

Roughing in the tattoos and tightening up the line art

Now, the fun -- the little icons and callouts from my various stories over the past eight years. See if you can match each one to each story :)

Some staged color in the icons and callouts.

And that's as much as I'm willing to show you for now. The final art is nearly ready, and once it is, it'll get uploaded along with the book metadata to Bowker (the ISBN people) and Ingram (the book catalog people), and will begin showing up on Amazon for presale.

I'm also contemplating making prints of the final art available -- would you buy one? Comment or email and let me know!